This invention relates to audiovisual teaching apparatus and, more particularly, to apparatus for presenting motion video sequences for educational purposes.
Audiovisual teaching apparatus in the prior art has generally fallen into two distinct categories. The first category includes simple motion picture or video tape programs offering instruction for the benefit of students and permitting students to experience, through the medium of video projection, a wide variety of subject matter. The second general class of prior art audiovisual teaching equipment utilizes still projection or motion video projection of events leading to a question which must be answered by the student. Such equipment may, for example, be computer controlled such that, when the student has made his choice, the equipment notifies the student as to whether his choice was correct or incorrect and often arranges the teaching set to conform with the student's learning progress.
Both of these forms of audiovisual equipment have serious limitations. The simple video projection, although it may be engrossing to the student, permits no interaction whatsoever, so that it is impossible to determine a student's retention utilizing the equipment or to have the student interact with the equipment. Since interaction requires a greater involvement of the student in the learning process, simple video projection is only partially successful for educational purposes.
The second form of audiovisual teaching equipment permits a certain degree of interaction. The limitation in this case, however, is the fact that, when a student makes an incorrect choice, the equipment notifies him that this choice is incorrect and either repeats the previous question or permits him to proceed to new questions. This type of interaction is similar to the effect on a child of telling the child, for example, that it is unsafe to enter a busy street. The child may accept this statement, but the mere statement can never have the effect that seeing an accident occur in the busy street can have. Thus, although there is a certain degree of feedback in such equipment, the feedback is a simple positive or negative and does not reinforce the student's learning through experience.